Haiti trip changed lives

When orthopedic spine surgeon Dr. Jesse Butler saw images of the lives shattered by the Haiti earthquake, he knew he had to help the only way he knew how: by fixing broken backs.

Within 48 hours of the Jan. 12 quake, the physician from Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge organized a spinal surgery team, called in favors to collect millions of dollars of medical equipment and boarded a plane to the Dominican Republic.

"Instead of going the traditional route through a relief agency, we thought it would be more successful if we took charge of the logistics ourselves," Butler said. "We put together a team that could pretty much handle anything thrown at them."

In one week, the team operated on 11 patients, ages 14 to 35, including a 25-year-old pregnant woman whose injuries had left her a quadriplegic. Nine of the patients were Haitian earthquake victims; two were injured in a motorcycle crash.

Despite the severity of the patients' injuries and the tragedies they'd been through, members of the surgical team said they were struck by the Haitians' resolve to live and wait for help.

"When you looked into their eyes, you saw a terror and fear that just burns into your soul," said Dr. Howard Konowitz, an anesthesiologist from Gottlieb Memorial Hospital in Melrose Park who was on the trip. "There was no morphine ... but no one was moaning, no one was screaming."

The team performed its work at Dario Contreras Hospital, a public hospital in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo where many Haitians have sought medical attention since the earthquake. Team members chose the hospital consulting with the Ministry of Health on where their skills would be of most help.

The team worked in grueling conditions, operating in rooms where the heat reached 85 degrees. Some patients waited in crowded hallways, others on thin mattresses atop rusted metal frames.

"We were working long hours. The rooms were so hot people were dehydrated," said Teresa Dudic, a bilingual scrub nurse from Gottlieb. "And the patients, you could see the desperation in their eyes, they were scared."

Konowitz described the trip as "life-changing."

"All the other catastrophes that I can remember in my lifetime, there was nothing medically like this that I can remember," he said. "It's haunting what we saw."

And although it was gratifying to provide what help they could, team members recognized it was a tiny fraction of the need.

"We may have fixed their spine during the week, but we only got to 11 (people)," Butler said. "There were another 20 we couldn't take care of."

And the people they did treat need long-term care.

Maria Korbel, another member of the team who's bilingual and a registered nurse at the Illinois Bone & Joint Institute in Morton Grove, said she hopes their work will inspire others.

"If we were able to start a chain reaction, I think that would be fabulous," Korbel said. "I hope we started something good, something positive, something that will keep going."

Physician's assistant Alicia Granger-Carlson and nurse Aimee Duque-Randolph also were members of the team.